Love and Other Thought Experiments
On sale
6th February 2020
Price: £8.99
McKitterick Prize, 2022
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020
Longlisted for the Desmond Eliot Prize 2020
Longlisted for the Polari Prize 2021
Featuring on BBC 2’s Between the Covers
‘Sophie Ward is a dazzling talent who writes like a modern-day F Scott Fitzgerald’ Elizabeth Day, author of How To Fail
‘An act of such breath-taking imagination, daring and detail that the journey we are on is believable and the debate in the mind non-stop. There are elements of Doris Lessing in the writing – a huge emerging talent here’ Fiona Shaw
‘A towering literary achievement’ Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things
Rachel and Eliza are planning their future together. One night in bed Rachel wakes up terrified and tells Eliza that an ant has crawled into her eye and is stuck there. Rachel is certain; Eliza, a scientist, is sceptical. Suddenly their entire relationship is called into question. What follows is a uniquely imaginitive sequence of interlinked stories ranging across time, place and perspective to form a sparkling philosophical tale of love, lost and found across the universe.
Longlisted for the Desmond Eliot Prize 2020
Longlisted for the Polari Prize 2021
Featuring on BBC 2’s Between the Covers
‘Sophie Ward is a dazzling talent who writes like a modern-day F Scott Fitzgerald’ Elizabeth Day, author of How To Fail
‘An act of such breath-taking imagination, daring and detail that the journey we are on is believable and the debate in the mind non-stop. There are elements of Doris Lessing in the writing – a huge emerging talent here’ Fiona Shaw
‘A towering literary achievement’ Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things
Rachel and Eliza are planning their future together. One night in bed Rachel wakes up terrified and tells Eliza that an ant has crawled into her eye and is stuck there. Rachel is certain; Eliza, a scientist, is sceptical. Suddenly their entire relationship is called into question. What follows is a uniquely imaginitive sequence of interlinked stories ranging across time, place and perspective to form a sparkling philosophical tale of love, lost and found across the universe.
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Reviews
Ward's ingenious fiction debut stands in a tradition of philosophical fiction: Voltaire's Candide, Sartre's Nausea . . . [Her] writing is often moving, exuberant and sensitive . . . gifts of bravura wit and imagination
I loved Love and Other a Thought Experiments. Each chapter works as a story, immersive and compelling, and then the wider structure takes over, the harmonics sound out, and it accumulates into a universe of its own. Really ingenious, full of wisdom, full of love
A game changer
Love and Other Thought Experiments is brilliant and playful. From the first page you know you're in a unique and compelling universe of Ward's making
Love and Other Thought Experiments is acutely original and thought-provoking. From beginning to end it is beautifully observed, intelligently constructed and deftly handled. Love and Other Thought Experiments is as multi-faceted as a diamond; a true philosophical hoard; a book I shall always treasure
Sophie Ward is an innovative and highly sophisticated writer
Ward has achieved something quite extraordinary: a super-smart metaphysical romp that's also warm, wistful and heartfelt. A book that declares, winningly, that just because it's all in your head, it doesn't mean it's not real.
It is an act of such breath-taking imagination, daring and detail that the journey we are on is believable and the debate in the mind non-stop. There are elements of Doris Lessing in the writing - a huge emerging talent here
a genuinely affective family narrative that is emotionally compelling as well as intellectually stimulating. Surely not since Jostein Gaarder's 1991 novel Sophie's World, has an author produced such an imaginative and original synthesis of fiction and philosophy
Sophie Ward is a dazzling talent who writes like a modern-day F Scott Fitzgerald
Elegant, erudite, brave and moving, Sophie Ward's debut is a stunning achievement
Brimming with close observation . . . the sheer literary ambition on show is impressive, with Ward producing a highly original first novel that echoes European experimentalists such as Kundera and Krasznahorkai
Sophie Ward's writing is as clear as a knife sounded against a glass and just as attention-grabbing. Fiction, fable and philosophy combined together with real human folly and fate at its heart. This book is as hard to pin down as it's impossible to forget
In Love and Other Thought Experiments, Ward proposes to alter the colour of her readers' minds . . . But the success of Ward's venture inevitably depends on the quality of the writing. This is often moving, exuberant and sensitive. We care about her characters and share their hopes and fears. Ward's investigation and practice of empathy is easily the best thing in the book.
Philosophy meets fiction in this beguiling and intriguing novel of minds, hearts, other worlds, love, death and everything in between. It's a book that dances and dazzles with ideas and left me thinking long after I finished it
Sophie Kinsella
Love and Other Thought Experiments is a towering literary achievement. Sophie's prose is exquisite and her storytelling powerful, poignant and utterly gripping. An astonishing debut